who, after his interviews with Ministers and great men, could go home and send off in an official despatch the whole dialogue of the audience. But why seek for the precise expressions she employed? The meaning should surely be enough for him, and that was-there was no denying it—that the disparity of their ages was a bar to his pretensions. "Had our ranks

in life been alike, there might have been force in her observation; but she forgets that a coronet encircles a brow like a wreath of youth;" and he adjusted the curls of his wig as he spoke, and smiled at himself more successfully than he had done before.

"On the whole, perhaps it is better," said he, as he arose and walked the room. "A mésalliance can only be justified by great beauty or great wealth. One must do a consumedly rash thing, or a wonderfully sharp one, to come out well with the world. Forty thousand, and a good-looking girl-she isn't more,-would not satisfy the just expectations of society, which, with men like myself, are severely exacting."

He had met a repulse, he could not deny it, and the sense of pain it inflicted galled him to the quick. To be sure, the thing occurred in a remote, out-of-the-way spot, where there were no people to discover or retail the story. It was not as if it chanced in some cognate land of society, where such incidents get immediate currency and form the gossip of every coterie. Who was ever to hear of what passed in an Irish country-house? Marion herself indeed might write it, she most probably would but to whom? To some friend as little in the world as herself, and none knew better than Lord Culduff of how few people the "world" was composed. It was a defeat, but a defeat that need never be gazetted. And after all, are not the worst things in all our reverses, the comments that are passed upon them? Are not the censures of our enemies and the condolences of our friends sometimes harder to bear than the misfortunes that have evoked them?

: What Marion's manner towards him might be in future, was also a painful reflection. It would naturally be a triumphant incident in her life to have rejected such an offer. Would she be eager to parade this fact before the world? Would she try to let people know that she had refused him? This was possible. He felt that such a slight would tarnish the whole glory of his life, whose boast was to have done many things that were actually wicked, but not one that was merely weak.

The imminent matter was to get out of his present situation without defeat. To quit the field, but not as a beaten army; and revolving how this was to be done he sunk off to sleep.

279

The Knapsack in Spain.

(CONCLUSION.)

Ir is an amiable weakness, and one very characteristic of the country, that every place in Spain considers itself better worth seeing than every other place in Spain, and consequently in the world, and generally has some proverb or jingle which says so pretty plainly. Thus you are told that He's a most unlucky devil,

But whatever the form or subject, the sentiment is always the same. I cannot recollect the corresponding "refran "-there is one no doubt— which has for its theme the town of Ronda. The only thing of the sort I can call to mind merely pays a high compliment to the proverbial salubrity of the place, and may be freely translated:

Up at Ronda no one sickens :

Men of eighty, there, are chickens.

But judging by what is always said at Granada, or Malaga, whenever the question is raised as to the finest route westwards, I should imagine the popular dictum must be somewhat in the form of "If you can, why then beyond a Doubt you ought to go by Ronda." If the reader has any tolerably good map of Spain at hand, a glance at it will explain how it comes that Ronda is at once a place of such decided attractions, and at the same time so difficult of access. The great mountain chain of which the Sierra Nevada forms the highest and most easterly mass, runs, under different names, and with a break or two, as at Padul, near Granada, and again close to Malaga, pretty regularly, and generally parallel to the sea-shore, until nearly opposite the Straits. There it takes somewhat the form of an outspread hand, sending one finger down to Gibraltar, another to Tarifa,

another pointing to Cadiz, another towards Jerez; not to speak of several thumbs in several directions. Ronda lies well up among the knuckles of this hand, consequently in the heart of an intricate mountain tract, charmingly picturesque, but almost entirely roadless. In fact there are not, I believe, ten miles of road properly so called between Malaga and Cadiz. There are two or three between San Roque and Campo, on the way to Gibraltar; and a magnificent road to connect Tarifa with Algeciras has been some time laid out, and nearly a mile and a half of it is already completed and fit for travelling; and there are, besides, some few miles of fair road on the approach to Cadiz; but that is all as far as I can recollect. Consequently for the traveller who wishes to take Ronda and the Ronda district en route, there is only one way, according to Spanish ideas, of doing it,— to hire horses and a guide and make a saddle journey of it. This, with a well-fed and well-appointed steed, would be very delightful, but the ordinary 'tourist's chance of such a luxury is a poor one, and for what he gets he has to pay dearly. It will cost him very nearly as much to ride from Malaga to Cadiz as to go from Cadiz to Bayonne by rail. The question then will naturally arise as to whether the game is worth the candle, and whether there is no other way. If so, solvitur ambulando; the difficulty may easily be settled by sending the baggage round by Cordova, and walking, for the enterprise is really not attended with more difficulty than a pedestrian tour in the Tyrol.

As every book of travels in Spain contains a description of the route from Granada to Malaga, either by the bridle-road across the Sierra Tejeda by Alhama, or by the diligence road through Loja, that portion of the journey may be passed over here, in spite of the temptation to loiter on the heights above Malaga and contemplate that glorious view over the broad rich valley down below, and its vineyards and palm-trees, with the yellow sands and blue sea beyond: a glorious view even in this land where they are thick as blackberries in the season, and each seems to "kill its predecessor by its brilliancy. A few miles up this valley lies the little town of Alora, which owns a station on the Malaga and Cordova railway; and this, they told me at Malaga, was my station if I wished to walk over the mountains to Ronda, a most unaccountable and insane wish, as I was given to understand very unmistakably.

The town itself is posted some height above the valley in a cleft between two mountains, but there was a clean-looking little hostelry, something between a fonda and a posada, close to the railway station, and evidently of about the same date, which seemed to throw out a hint in a modest way that to go farther might be to fare worse. I arrived, however, at an unfortunate moment. El Amo, besides his business as an innkeeper, was an orange-contractor, and the whole energies of the establishment were absorbed in the completion of a large order from an export house in Malaga. The landlord himself was conducting six disputes at once with as many orange-growers, and the landlady was keeping an eye to a bevy of dark-eyed damsels who were busy wrapping oranges in

paper and packing them in those long boxes which are such familiar objects in any landscape about Fish Street Hill or Billingsgate. A sound of nail-driving in furious haste, such as might be produced by a sporting undertaker who had backed himself to make coffins against time, came from a verandah hard by where the boxes were being put together, an operation which seemed to be effected with about four taps of a hammer. Every corner was piled from floor to ceiling with the dark glossy green fruit for they are packed green and allowed to ripen in transitu, — in fact the orange influence was as strong all over the place as if it had been the borough of Enniskillen, and a mere traveller was of no more account than a tourist in a party inn at election time. In other countries, where the travelling public is courted and petted and spoiled, this would be a grievance, but in unlocomotive Spain the traveller soon learns his position and ceases to look upon himself as one to whom all things must give way because he happens to be en voyage. So, until my little business in the way of dinner could be attended to, I amused myself with extracting information about the orange-trade from the box-maker (which was not as clear as I could have wished, the young man's mouth being full of nails) and speculating on the future of these oranges, following them in fancy as they made the circuit of the pit in company with lemonade, ginger-beer, and a bill of the play, or haply, in another place, lubricated the rhetoric of Mr. Whalley as he denounced the Pope. As a matter of fact it turned out they were destined for the American market, but of course they were just as good for sentimental purposes. There is no better discipline for an impatient temper than a week's travelling on the byroads of Spain. The Spaniard will not be driven. You must accommodate your pace to his, and if you do so with a good grace all will go smoothly. They took their time about it, I admit, but still in their own leisurely deliberate way these good people of Alora did what they could to make me comfortable, and the landlord produced some uncommonly sound Malaga seco, and over it gave me counsel of the same quality as to my road. Ronda lies some nine or ten leagues to the west of Alora, a trifle too much for a pleasant day's walk in these latitudes; so I took his advice and broke the journey by putting up at the Baths of Carratraca, an easy march of about five hours. Carratraca is a picturesque lonely little village planted on the side of a bare wild valley shut in by lofty grey mountains. In spite of its loneliness, or perhaps because of it, it is high in favour as a watering-place with the people of Seville, Cadiz, and Malaga, who muster there in great force during the autumn months. Rheumatic and cutaneous affections are, I believe, the special province of the waters, but as far as I could make out there is no ailment under the sun for which they cannot do something in the way of alleviation. Dyspepsia, hypochondriasis, loss of appetite, over-eating, over-work, or idleness, all these seem to find relief at Carratraca. But perhaps the strongest proof of the marvellous efficacy of these baths is to be found in a case which I saw quoted in the columns of El Cascabel.

A middle-aged gentleman of ancient descent but impoverished estate had married a lady of mature years and some property, and having thus restored the fortunes of his house, was naturally anxious for an heir to his name. After waiting in vain he consulted a friend, who recommended a trial of the waters of Carratraca. The advice proved sound, for, in due time, after a course of the baths, the worthy couple had the happiness of welcoming a little stranger. But the effect did not cease here. For the next fifteen years did that lady continue with astonishing regularity to present her husband annually with a pledge of her affection and proof of the potency of the Carratraca waters, and thus, though the continuance of his line was made pretty safe, the restoration of his family to its ancestral splendour remained as far off as ever.

If the landlord of the Fonda de Calenco at Carratraca had derived any part of his income from letting out horses to travellers, I should not have paid much attention to his lecture on the imprudence of walking alone across the mountains to Ronda. But he was evidently disinterested, and besides what he said was, to some extent, backed up by the authority of Ford. While robbers did exist, there certainly was not a more robber-haunted district in the whole of Spain than this of which Ronda is the centre. This was the country of José Maria, the Rob Roy of Andalusia; and it is just here that Ford says people very ambitious of a brigand adventure may yet try the experiment with some little prospect of success. On the other hand, it was suspicious that, according to the landlord, all the risk lay in the neighbourhood of Ronda, the immediate vicinity of Carratraca being perfectly safe, and I had been more than once before warned in the same way about localities which, in their turn, recriminated on the quarter whence the warning came. Still, as there might be something in what mine host said, it seemed advisable to take some extra precautions. The day before leaving London, passing a shop where a quantity of spurious jewellery was exhibited, I bethought me of the advice in Gatherings from Spain to travellers bound for the Spanish byroads to provide themselves with a gaudy gilt chain, the better to satisfy brigand rapacity. Accordingly I purchased, for the sum of eighteenpence, an exceedingly rich and massive " Albert ;" so splendid, in fact, that up to this I had not had the courage to wear it. The present, however, seemed to be a fitting occasion for putting it on; and protected by this talisman and another little trinket, also recommended by Ford, a fresh-capped pocket revolver, I left Carratraca long before the most conscientious invalid had begun to think of his morning bath, and by sunrise had got over the first league of the road to Ronda. I ought rather to say the path, for in truth it was a mere track, a streak of dust winding along the bare brown mountain-side, and scarcely distinguishable from it. I cannot honestly commend this route to Ronda for richness or soft beauty of landscape; but there is a pervading grimness about the scenery which saves it from being commonplace. It is a good sample of "tawny Spain" in her tawniest mood. League after league the path runs on climbing